Autonomous vehicles are complex systems with many hardware and software components operating in an uncertain and dynamic environment. Integrated system architecture and coherent component modules are required to build robust autonomous vehicles. Research in autonomous land vehicles, in areas such as mobility control, localization, navigation, planning, and communication have provided fruitful results that paved the road for creating intelligent autonomous vehicles.
Open-pit mining, a widely used economical mining method, usually involves operating large mining equipment in remote and potentially hazardous environments. It is therefore desirable to develop automation technology in this field to achieve higher efficiency and safety. Additional and different difficulties can be encountered in applying the aforementioned robotics technologies in the domain of open-pit mining where considerations must account for the size of the machines and their terrain interaction.
A surface drill, equipped with two actuating tracks for movement, is used to drill multi-meter-deep holes into the ground. Drilled holes are subsequently filled with explosives and blasted so that material in the ground can be removed. The positions of drill-holes are carefully planned in patterns according to the ground geology. The majority of holes in a pattern present a high level of geometric consistency, i.e., being equally spaced and aligned in certain directions. Therefore drills are mostly operated in rigorously defined manoeuvres, e.g., straight-line tramming, row shifting, three-point turning, etc.
Given a pattern of planned holes to drill, it is a particular challenge for an automated control system of a surface drilling rig to determine an appropriate path to follow, and then to follow it with sufficient accuracy to drill each of the holes.